Was Fletcher Prouty Correct About the Christchurch Star?

Summary

There is probably nothing suspicious about a New Zealand newspaper's early publication of allegations about Oswald.

The Account in JFK

Oliver Stone’s film, JFK, publicised the claim that biographical information about Lee Oswald had been planted in advance in a newspaper published in New Zealand:

Fletcher Prouty’s Allegation

The Mr X character was based partly on L. Fletcher Prouty, whose account of the issue is available at http://www.prouty.org/letter4.html. Prouty writes:

A newspaper on the streets between 1300 and 1400 hours on the 23rd, in Christchurch, had to have been printed and on the streets at least 6 hours before Oswald had been arraigned for JFK’s murder. This time gap itself creates a very doubtful possibility for anything but the most rudimentary account. Reporters would not have started on the collation of such bizarre data as was created for the Oswald scenario. They had to collect it, verify it, and then write their columns, first — let alone the time consumed in publication and distribution required for true news data.

What has concerned me, since that date, is that this early afternoon newspaper, published in New Zealand, has many columns of Lee Harvey Oswald’s biography that must have been assembled, written and transmitted around the world many hours before Oswald had been arraigned. Other papers were given the same material about Oswald. They printed it too.

Keep in mind, he was picked up by the police as a suspect in the crime of killing a Dallas policeman. That certainly could not have been the basis for reporters to begin a world-wide search for “Oswald News Items”. Such activity could only have begun, properly and lawfully, after the court had charged Oswald with the crime.

… in the lower left-hand corner of the front page there is a story under the heading, “Arrested Man Lived in Russia.” At that time the STAR, and other papers around the world, also published a fine studio photo of Oswald. There is no way that the newspapers could have run that select photo unless it had been provided to them before the murder and his arraignment. Oswald, who had yet to be charged, was wearing street clothes that day, not a suit coat and tie.

There can be no question but what this “Oswald biography” that was flashed around the world even before he was charged with the crime was a preplanned part of the conspiracy.

… I am well aware of the fact that global communications in 1963 was fast and effective everywhere. I find no fault with that part of the game. What is clear is that the “Oswald did it alone” story was contrived, and the cover story had been printed and made available around the world even before Oswald had been arraigned.

In other words, the newspaper did not have enough time to perform the necessary research, and so it must have been provided with the information in advance, in order to spread the false story that Oswald was guilty of the assassination.

The Christchurch Star’s Account

Reproductions of the newspaper’s coverage of the assassination are available at https://my.christchurchcitylibraries­.com/the-christchurch-star-23-november-1963/. On page one, under the headline “Arrested Man Lived in Russia”, the Christchurch Star’s report includes the following biographical information about Oswald:

Police said Oswald was an employee in the building where the rifle was found following the President’s assassination, British United Press reported.

Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, it was later learned.

He returned to the United States last year.

He has a Russian wife and a child.

While in the Soviet Union he worked in a Minsk factory.

He went to the Soviet Union following his discharge from the Marines.

While in Russia he apparently became disillusioned with life there.

Soviet authorities gave him and his family exit permits to return to America.

Oswald was later identified as chairman of a “fair play for Cuba committee.”

The paper’s only comment about Oswald’s arrest appeared in the same story on page one:

Police have arrested a man employed at the building where a rfle was found after President Kennedy’s assassination, British United Press reported.

The man, reported to be married to a Russian, shot dead a police officer as he was chased into a Dallas cinema. … After being questioned for two hours, Oswald denied any connection with the murder of President Kennedy or the policeman. … He became the prime suspect in the assassination of the President.

The studio photograph of Oswald, which Prouty mentions, was printed on page three.

When Was the Newspaper Published?

The same web page gives a brief account of the newspaper’s access to information about Oswald and the assassination:

The Christchurch Star reported that the Kennedy assassination took place at 7:00 am (New Zealand time), Saturday, 23 November 1963. Oswald was taken into custody at 8:50 am, at first charged with the shooting of Dallas Patrolman J. D. Tippit. The press knew of Oswald’s being in custody by 10 am and could begin gathering information about him. The Christchurch Star was published in the early afternoon.

The first edition of the paper came out at 1:30pm New Zealand Standard Time, seven hours after the assassination and five and a half hours after Oswald’s arrest. There was another edition at 2:30pm. (The assassination took place at 7:30am on the 23rd, New Zealand time, not 7am as the quotation above states.)

When Was Oswald First Named?

There is some doubt about exactly when Oswald was first publicly announced as a suspect in the killing of President Kennedy, as opposed to being announced as a suspect in the killing of Officer Tippit, the offence for which he was arrested. The earliest quotation in President Kennedy Has Been Shot, Sourcebooks, 2003, on p.127, is from an ABC News broadcast at 3:23pm Dallas time (9:23am NZST), four hours or more before the newspaper was published:

The police department today arrested a twenty-four-year-old man, Lee H. Oswald, in connection with the slaying of a Dallas policeman shortly after President Kennedy was assassinated. He also is being questioned to see if he had any connection with the slaying of the president.

Newspapers’ Access to Information

As well as “British United Press”, the report cites “N.Z.P.A.-A.A.P.”: the New Zealand Press Association and the Australian Associated Press.

The Christchurch City Libraries web page reports that the newspaper was receiving plenty of information about the assassination several hours before publication:

Bob Cotton was a reporter at the paper at the time and can recall clearly the events of November 1963. He says that even in 1963 global communication was fast and effective, and an assassination of an American President meant that everything and everyone on The Star worked doubly quick. News then came by AAP and various wire services which would have been competing to get the news out to their subscribers.

Photographs were usually wired to Australia, then to Auckland and then to Christchurch. This time, to get the photographs early, some of the geographical links were bypassed through technical ingenuity at The Star. Even so, the paper would not have been published until 1:30 pm or 2:15 — 2:30 pm depending on the edition.

Photographs certainly were obtained early on. According to the same web page, “the portrait of him [Oswald] in The Christchurch Star had appeared in The Fort Worth Press on 16 November 1963.” The Christchurch Star’s afternoon edition included a photograph of the Texas School Book Depository, which it almost certainly did not have in its own collection. It is not unreasonable to assume that it obtained its photograph of Oswald at the same time.

Many newspapers around the world already possessed information about Oswald from the time of his defection to the Soviet Union in 1959. From the Christchurch City Libraries web page:

Bob Cotton also explains that every newspaper has a large store of biographical material, and says that Lee Harvey Oswald was not a stranger to the media. Information on him would have been readily available in American newspapers and media offices and would have been sent out quickly. In 1959 there had been much coverage in newspapers about young men defecting to the Soviet Union and Oswald’s defection had been covered in detail in The Washington Post, The Washington Evening Star and The New York Times.

Conclusion

There is no substance to the claims made by the Mr X character in JFK and by Fletcher Prouty:

• The Mr X character claimed that “New Zealand … papers … were pretty sure of the fact he’d killed the President alone”. On the contrary, the Christchurch Star stated only that Oswald was a suspect in the assassination, as indeed he was at the time the article was written.
• Fletcher Prouty wrote that “the ‘Oswald did it alone’ story was contrived, and the cover story had been printed and made available around the world even before Oswald had been arraigned.” There seems to be no reason to doubt that the biographical information provided by the newspaper, and the photograph of Oswald, were either already in its files or provided by other news organisations in the six hours or so between the assassination and the story’s publication.

Categorised under:

• Claims of Altered Evidence
• Oliver Stone’s JFK
• Specific Assassination Theories